School district to use idle property as temporary field lab

An idle property off Calle Barcelona once planned for a middle school will become a temporary outdoor field lab for local high school students.

The project, planned by the San Dieguito Union High School District and a special-education teacher at La Costa Canyon High School, is intended to use the 22 acres for educational purposes rather than ignoring it.

The field lab is scheduled to be ready for students at the end of this month. The district will spend about $40,000 for some improvements, such as a 50-foot-by-50-foot asphalt pad, a shade structure, fencing and two gates for pedestrian access.

Elizabeth Engelberg said she looks forward to regularly taking her 18 students to the site, which is thick with chaparral, wild grasses and seasonal pockets of wetlands. Her students, who have a range of disabilities including autism and mental retardation, will conduct field studies of plants and animals.

Biology and ecology lessons will require students to classify specimens, learn about natural habitats, and study climate and weather, Engelberg said. The site may eventually have a weather station.

Engelberg will be the first teacher to take students to the site, but she said she wouldn't be surprised if her colleagues join her.

“Now that I've been talking about it with other science teachers, they're excited, too,” she said. “I suspect it will become a great science center for many.”

The district had planned to build a middle school when it bought the property for $5.8 million in 1999. But flattening enrollment in recent years negated the need for a new school, administrators have said.

The changed plans have angered some nearby residents, who have said that the district led them to believe their neighborhood would include a middle school. They also fear the district may sell the property to a developer.

But the district doesn't seem to be in a hurry to sell. Trustees have said it would be foolish to get rid of the land when coastal property remains high-priced and rare – and enrollment could spring back.

Creating an outdoor study area could help the school district get an exemption from costly fees it has paid to the state for leaving the land idle.

The state requires public school districts to pay an annual “nonuse fee” if they don't develop, sell or otherwise get rid of unused properties. The state began charging the fee to public school districts in 1974.

To date, the district has paid $313,424 in state fees and an additional $131,000 is expected for this fiscal year, said Steve Ma, the school district's assistant superintendent of business.

The district can apply for an exemption after the outdoor field lab has been operating for a year, Ma said.

“We can apply for an exemption once we kick off this class, but there's no guarantee,” Ma said. “We have to go through the exemption process.”

In the meantime, educators will use the property for what it was intended a decade ago – even if there's not yet a campus there.